Page:Manual of the New Zealand Flora.djvu/685

Agathis.]

Evergreen monœcious or diœcious trees, often of great size. Leaves subopposite or alternate, broad, flat, coriaceous; nerves parallel. Male flowers solitary, axillary, peduncled; peduncle furnished with imbricate scales at the top. Anthers densely spirally arranged on a cylindrical column; cells 5–15, pendulous from the top of a rigid stipes. Female cones terminating short branchlets, broadly ovoid or globose; scales densely spirally arranged, tips broad. Ovules solitary or rarely 2 at the base of each scale and adnate to it, reversed. Mature cone globose or nearly so; scales closely imbricating and appressed, broad, flattened, hard but scarcely woody. Seeds 1 to each scale, very rarely 2, reversed, compressed, ovate or oblong; testa thin, produced into a membranous wing; albumen fleshy; cotyledons 2.

1. A. australis, ''Salisb. in Trans. Linn. Soc.'' viii. (1807) 312.—A lofty forest-tree, with a straight columnar trunk and rounded somewhat bushy head, highly resiniferous in all its parts, usually ranging from 80 to 100 ft. high, with a trunk 4–10 ft. diam., but attaining an extreme height of 150 ft., with a trunk 15–22 ft. diam.; bark glaucous-grey, deciduous, falling off in large flat flakes. Leaves subopposite or alternate, sessile, very thick and coriaceous; of young trees lanceolate, 2–4 in. long, ¼–½ in. broad, gradually passing into those of mature trees, which are ¾–1½ in. long, linear-oblong or narrow obovate-oblong, obtuse. Flowers monoecious; males ¾–1½ in. long, cylindrical. Female cones obovoid in the flowering stage, becoming almost spherical when ripe, erect, 2–3 in. diam.; scales broad, flat, rather thin, falling away from the axis at maturity. Seeds 1 to each scale, ovate, compressed, winged.—Kirk, Forest Fl. tt. 79 to 81. Dammara australis, ''Lamb. Pin.'' ed. i. 2, 14; ''A. Cunn. Precur. n. 325; Raoul, Choix, 41; Hook. f. Fl. Nov. Zel. i. 231; Handb. N.Z. Fl.'' 256. Podocarpus zamiæfolius, ''A. Rich. Fl. Nouv. Zel.'' 360.

Abundant in forests from the North Cape to Tauranga and Kawhia. Sea-level to 2000 ft. Kauri, of the resin kapia.